At 8:09 PM -0500 1/23/98, Steve Sobol wrote:
On Fri, Jan 23, 1998 at 07:19:54PM -0500, Dean Anderson wrote:
I presume you mean cases where this law has been applied. I will look that up. But even if there were no cases, the law can still be applied to the first person caught violating them.
But there have been court cases cited that prove that you're wrong. Compuserve v. Cyber Promotions, for example. Or any of the AOL victories.
They don't prove that crimminal laws don't apply. They prove that spammers financially responsible for damages they cause, when they do things that one should know they aren't authorized to do, or when they expropriate names and other things. Sounds reasonable to me. You seem to think that since somebody won a case on expropriating their name, that you can do anything you want, and act like no laws apply to you.
But in many, many cases, LIKE MINE, that's not the case! Why do you automatically assume that?
I'm not assuming it is the case. You are. But if its your business to transport packets from one place to another, and you are otherwise supposed to transport packets from your customers to your uplink provider and vice versa, but instead you block some of them for personal or political reasons, this law prohibits that. If that's what you do, then it applies to you. If thats not what you do, then it doesn't apply to you.
We're not blocking spammers at this point, Dean, so I can't really say anything. Except that the aforementioned court cases say that the OWNERS OF THE SERVERS HAVE A RIGHT TO PROTECT SAID SERVERS FROM MISUSE.
Of course you have a right to protect your property. But blocking emails for personal or political reasons is not "protecting your property". You sold/leased the resources to your customers. They aren't yours to do anything you like with, anymore. These laws to protect the privacy and integrity of communications.
Well then, why hasn't every single person running an Internet-connected computer been thrown in jail? Because -- the routers between point a and point b on the Net MUST LOOK AT THE PACKETS to determine where to route them.
Looking at packets incidental or necessary to operations (such as routing) is permitted. It says that. Blocking packets for personal or political reasons doesn't qualify as incidental to network operations, or protecting your property. Why is that so tough to understand? --Dean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++